As in all draughts variants, English draughts is played by two people, on opposite sides of a playing board, alternating moves. One player has black pieces, and the other has white or red pieces. Most commonly, the board alternates between red and black. The opponent's pieces are captured by jumping over them.

Rules

• Board - The board is an 8×8 grid, with alternating black and red squares, called a checkerboard (in the United States, in reference to its checkered pattern). This 8×8 checkered grid is shared with chess, and commercial chess sets often include draughts as a secondary game, sometimes with backgammon, which would use the same pieces on a board on the inside of the traditional folding chessboard/storage box. Some international variations of the game use a 10×10 or 12×12 board.
• Pieces - The pieces are usually made of wood and are flat and cylindrical. They are invariably split into one darker and one lighter colour. Traditionally, these colours are red and white, but red and black are common in the U.S., and light- and dark-stained wood are supplied with more expensive sets. There are two classes of pieces: "men" and "kings". Kings are differentiated as consisting of two normal pieces of the same colour, stacked one on top of the other. Often indentations are added to the pieces to aid stacking.
• Starting Position - Each player starts with 12 pieces on the dark spaces of the three rows closest to their own side, as shown in the diagram. The row closest to each player is called the "crownhead" or "kings row". The black (darker colour) side moves first.
• How to move - There are two ways to move a piece:
• A simple move involves sliding a piece one space diagonally forwards (also diagonally backwards in the case of kings) to an adjacent unoccupied dark square.
• A jump is a move from a square diagonally adjacent to one of the opponent's pieces to an empty square immediately and directly on the opposite side of the opponent's square, thus "jumping directly over" the square containing the opponent's piece. An uncrowned piece can only jump diagonally forwards, but a king can also jump diagonally backwards. A piece that is jumped is captured and removed from the board. Multiple-jump moves are possible if, when the jumping piece lands, there is another immediate piece that can be jumped, even if the jump is in a different direction. When multiple-option jumping moves are available, whether with the one piece in different directions or multiple pieces that can make various jumping moves, the player may choose which piece to jump with and which jumping option or sequence of jumps to make. The jumping sequence chosen does not necessarily have to be the one that would have resulted in the most captures; however, one must make all available captures in the chosen sequence. Any piece, whether it is a king or not, can jump a king.
• Kings - If a player's piece moves into the kings row on the opposing player's side of the board, that piece is said to be "crowned" (or often "kinged" in the U.S.), becoming a "king" and gaining the ability to move both forwards and backwards. If a player's piece jumps into the kings row, the current move terminates; having just been crowned, the piece cannot continue on by jumping back out (as in a multiple jump), until the next move. A piece is normally "crowned" by placing a second piece on top of it; some sets have pieces with a crown molded, engraved or painted on one side, allowing the player to simply turn the piece over or to place the crown-side up on the crowned piece, further differentiating Kings from ordinary pieces.
• How the game ends - A player wins by capturing all of the opposing player's pieces, or by leaving the opposing player with no legal moves.